Right to a Home

Our class has been learning about The Convention on the Rights of the Child and what this means for us and children around the world.  We enjoyed this short video that covers some of the ideas in the Convention.

This week, we learned about the right to a home.  We started by closing our eyes and picturing our selves in our home.  Then we shared our ideas and made a list of things about our homes that gives us a good quality of life.  Here was our list:

Mrs. Braybrook traveled to Kenya this summer and got to visit some different homes while she was there.  She showed us pictures from a few rural homes.  Some were made out of metal, others were made using wood and cement and others were made using sticks held together with cow manure.  They were quite small and did not have a lot in them.  The pictures of the Masai home had very tiny windows and cowhide mattresses.  All of these pictures were so different than what we know as a home.

Then we looked at a website that showed 10 kids from around the world and their bedrooms.  Once again, we were amazed at how different bedrooms can look--from a mattress in a field, to a packed room full of toys and stuffed animals.

We then had the chance to look at some books from our library about homes from around the world.  Here are some of them:

We worked in a small group to look through one of the books, read it and talk about what we noticed and were learning about homes.

In this lesson, there was some great discussion about homes--something we don't really ever think about because we have very comfortable homes.  It was good for all of us to see how other people live and try to imagine what it's like to live in those homes and how our lives would be different.

We were wondering...

What do you think a home must have to give people a good quality of life?
What are some different types of homes that you've seen or learned about?

Rock Walk

Our first unit in science is on rocks and minerals.  We've been learning about the different properties of rocks that scientists look at. 

They are:
1.  Color
2.  Streak color
3.  Lustre
4.  Texture
5.  Hardness

We did hardness tests on some sample rocks, using Moh's hardness scale.  We also have done streak color tests. 

Everyone really wanted to bring in rocks and some of our classmates already have.  Last Monday was a beautiful, warm fall day, so our class went for a "rock walk" down by the river to collect some rock samples. 

 

 

It was set up like a scavenger hunt and we had to look for certain rocks.  Here was our list:

 

 

Rocks that were shiny and glassy were the hardest ones to find.  We don't think that there are a lot of those types of rocks in our community.  Here you can see some of the samples we collected...

 Wait a minute...that's not a rock!

 

Now that we all have our rock collections, we are ready to analyze them like geologists do!

 

We were wondering...

What do you know about rocks and minerals?

Where would you go on a rock walk in your community?

What types of rocks do you think you would find?

 

Pajama Day!

Our class has been working so hard and earned our first class reward this week.  After some discussion about options and a vote, it was decided that we wanted to have a pajama day to celebrate.  So today, we got to wear our pajamas to school and bring a small stuffed animal to hang out with.

We got to do Read to Someone with our stuffies, but before starting, we had to tell them all about how we do it.  Our stuffed animals were such good listeners and loved the stories we read to them.  The rest of the day, we did our work in the comfort of our pj's and with our stuffed animals close by. 

We finished the day with some pj class pictures and we hope you like them!

We were wondering...

Have you ever worn your pajamas to school?
What is your favourite stuffed animal?